Tip for ipodders: If you want Apple Lossless but prefer ripping with EAC...

[Flasken]

.... Or if you're one of the 5% of all Itunes users whose cdrom-drive won't be recognized by the program. (that figure is straight from the horses mouth)

I'm about to receive an ipod so I started ripping my cds. I wanted everything in a lossless format, but Itunes wouldn't recognize my cds. No biggie, I thought, and started ripping my cds to wav using EAC so I could later compress the perfect wavs using Itunes. But after making everything ALAC, I found out that, unlike WMP, Real1, or any other media player I've used, iTunes can't auto-tag compressed files. Idiotically, the database function only works with cds, and if you prefer ripping with EAC, or if you're one of the many who can't use cds with iTunes, you're stuck with editing all the tags manually. Editing tags manually sucks. So I spent some time at hydrogenaudio and found a solution:

1. Presuming you have EAC, get iTunesEncode - unzip it.

2. Open EAC and go EAC>>Compression Options..>>External compression. Check "Use external coder..." Set "Parameter..." to user defined. Set file exstension to .m4a - Click Browse and choose iTunesEncode.exe.
Insert this in additional command line:

-e "Lossless Encoder" -a "%a" -l "%g" -t "%t" -g "%m" -y %y -n %n -i %s -o %d


-The rest of the options shouldn't matter.


3. Open iTunes, Load a cd with EAC, let freedb tag it, click the compress icon.
(don't touch anything in iTunes while EAC is ripping)

You should now have a tagged version of the cd in ALAC

 

[blessingx]

Good tip.

 

[Flasken]

Quote:

Originally Posted by blessingx Good tip.

Thanks! And BTW, when the freedb genre tag for a given song doesn't match any of the predifined iTunes genres, the song will end up without a genre tag, so always make sure you've genre tagged all your songs before transferring them to your ipod.

 

[aquatika]

Brilliant, thanks for the tip it works a treat.

I'd been hoping for something like this to come along.